1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a printing apparatus and a printing system, and, in particular, to a printing apparatus and a printing system by which the printing apparatus and a pocket electronic device are connected through a network such as a local network or the Internet, and, by which information transferred from the pocket electric device can be freely added to information originally provided in the printing apparatus, and the thus-obtained information can be printed out together.
2. Description of the Related Art
A pocket electric device represented by a cellular phone is becoming very common. Unlike an old PC (personal computer), it is very easy to use a pocket electric device instead of making it specialize in the use of a single purpose. As a kind of a pocket electric device, there are a cellular phone, a PDA (personal digital assistance), etc., and it has information on a telephone, schedule management, an address book, a telephone directory, etc. Furthermore, the correspondence to the Internet is seen as a recent trend of these pocket electric devices. For example, by e-mail, main communication can be made with persons in the world at real time, and it can be carried out now anywhere, and the Internet information can be directly searched with a Web browser, or data can be pulled thereout directly.
As a specific example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-222527 discloses the following system:
As an information output system which can output searched data which a user of a pocket electric device (Personal Digital Assistant equipment) obtains through search from a service center at a user-specified place. Specifically, for example, by using the personal digital assistant apparatus, search output demand information by which an object to be searched for and a data output place are specified is transferred to the service center. In the service center, the information output system carries out transfer of an output of the target data obtained through search from a database etc., based on a search request specified by the received search output demand information, by the service center, and the target information is output to the specified data output place.
Now, communication-of-information function of such a pocket electric device is improved, and even the online shopping currently offered on the Internet, ticket arrangement, and bank transfer can be performed through the pocket electric device.
Although the pocket electric device is used as above very convenient information input-and-output means, there is a problem that printing means for it is not offered in the pocket electric device used now. Software (printer driver) for using a printer is not loaded therein, while portability thereof is considered as important, because the pocket electric device is specialized for a single purposes. As a result, a hardware used for linking the device to a printer is not provided in the device, such as a connector, for example. This means that a printer cannot be operated by the pocket electric device.
Moreover, for the pocket electric device, as a result of considering portability as important, generally only a small operation panel is equipped. Although especially a demand of wanting to surely leave and put output information at hand in paper, or to see the information currently referred to on a large-scale display panel is strong, it is unthinkable for a user to purchase a special printer as expensive as several tens of times of the pocket electric device itself, since the pocket electric device is inherently very inexpensive.
By the way, digitization is almost completed now and a copy machine introduced into a convenience store or a general office is an MPF (multi-function peripheral), and it has a function of printing out data obtained from a PC or the other, in many cases. Furthermore, network connection is made with it, and it is shared in many cases on an intranet now.